The Cape Breton Regional Municipality’s interim chief administrative officer Marie Walsh said in a memo prepared for today’s council meeting in Frenchvale that an $890,000 surplus was held over from the 2012-13 budget year.

She said a budget freeze to curb spending at the end of the 2013-14 fiscal year left a slight surplus, meaning the $890,000 left over from the year before wasn’t needed to balance the books.

Under the province’s new financial condition index, the CBRM scores poorly in two categories tied to municipal reserve funds.

In her written recommendation to council, Walsh, who’s also the director of finance, said a general reserve fund would help protect the municipality’s finances against an unexpected event.

“This fund would be used for items such as overages in major crime or snow removal,” she said.

However, the $890,000 set aside is still not enough to meet the provincial Department of Municipal Affairs’ required threshold of a reserve fund of five per cent of total annual expenditures.

Walsh said the money adds up to less than one per cent of expenditures but it’s a start the CBRM “could build on” over time.

Following a particularly harsh winter, Mayor Cecil Clarke said in April council would look to establish a general reserve fund to take care of overruns in the winter operations budget among other areas.

A snow removal budget set at about $2.5 million was overwhelmed with a winter that saw an additional $1.5 million in costs.

The CBRM had a reserve fund as little as two years ago, however borrowing from it to help pay for capital projects eventually depleted the reserve to nil.

Council meets for its regular monthly meeting today at the Frenchvale fire hall at 1:30 p.m.

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curtis

August 19, 2014 - 16:57

Maybe it is about time that people stop looking at the polished BS'R looking too move onto greater things.
I have a question as to the former minister of energy as to what that has done for this province along with the municipality.
It would have been nice to see a tax per litre etc,but for some reason the former minister based taxes on the big oil company's profit from their net profits after all their expenses.
What a joke pay that tax at the pump as the N.S.GoV. spent billions,billions of dollars doing the groundwork.
I dare say say that Cecil will be well off whether he get's elected here again or federally he will be walking away with a nice windfall.
Wow he may even be named to a board of some big company that participates in the NS offshore and make even more.
I guess most people have not seen this before but hey what do you do?Maybe it is time for somebody with some common sense that has no hidden agenda.
Curtis.

Maybe it is about time that people stop looking at the polished BS'R looking too move onto greater things.
I have a question as to the former minister of energy as to what that has done for this province along with the municipality.
It would have been nice to see a tax per litre etc,but for some reason the former minister based taxes on the big oil company's profit from their net profits after all their expenses.
What a joke pay that tax at the pump as the N.S.GoV. spent billions,billions of dollars doing the groundwork.
I dare say say that Cecil will be well off whether he get's elected here again or federally he will be walking away with a nice windfall.
Wow he may even be named to a board of some big company that participates in the NS offshore and make even more.
I guess most people have not seen this before but hey what do you do?Maybe it is time for somebody with some common sense that has no hidden agenda.
Curtis.

Maybe it is about time that people stop looking at the polished BS'R looking too move onto greater things.
I have a question as to the former minister of energy as to what that has done for this province along with the municipality.
It would have been nice to see a tax per litre etc,but for some reason the former minister based taxes on the big oil company's profit from their net profits after all their expenses.
What a joke pay that tax at the pump as the N.S.GoV. spent billions,billions of dollars doing the groundwork.
I dare say say that Cecil will be well off whether he get's elected here again or federally he will be walking away with a nice windfall.
Wow he may even be named to a board of some big company that participates in the NS offshore and make even more.
I guess most people have not seen this before but hey what do you do?Maybe it is time for somebody with some common sense that has no hidden agenda.
Curtis.

This has been a part of budgeting since Chxxxt was a cowboy! They used to refer to it as contingencies or you could just say prudence or common sense or rainy day. Just stop spending JUST because there's money in the budget for it.

Can anybody say mismanagement? Just to give council and mayor a heads up , we will be getting snow again this winter.
What is meant by overtime for criminal investigation? What investigations are necessary that can't be done during regular hours and don't we already have full time investigators?
I can see pretty soon we will be paying councillors to work overtime. No wonder CBRM is broke.